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2: Leadership's New Benchmark

The author goes into an extended examination of strategy in football - and there's much more of it than on might assume. Aside of the physical training, a significant amount of time is spent preparing for the competition in auditoriums and meeting rooms, examining the tactics of the team they will soon face.

Teams make extensive use of digital video, and study their own maneuvers as well as those of their upcoming opponents, and a significant amount of analysis is done (players don't simply watch the video as if it's self-evident, and there's a sizable staff of analysts who review game video and practice sessions, write reports, develop presentations, and chart strategies.

By the time the team takes the field, they know the opposing team's strategy and the tendencies of each player of the opposing team. They have also analyzed the footage of their own team, and know what the other team might expect (from having done the same thing), and formulate strategies to break predictable patterns and add uncertainty.

Managed Learning

The notion of organizational learning is largely credited to Edwards Deming (who was an assistant to MacArthur in WWII). Deming is known in the business world for his work in rebuilding the Japanese economy, which he did a bit too well, as Japan became a significant power in the East, which is largely accredited to his guidance.

Deming was of the belief that the chief problem in the commercial sector was lack of leadership, especially leaders who were able to plan a long-term strategy to stay in business rather than merely looking at the financials for the next fiscal quarter.

Deming's approach focused on long-range strategy over short-term goals, and was based on the importance of intelligence. The key idea was knowledge-based leadership - differentiated from mere experience or information. Information itself is just data, which must be analyzed and applied in order to be meaningful and useful.

Huddle Up

Back to football, the author examines the practice of the huddle, in which a team withdraws from the opposing sidelines to communicate in secret about the upcoming play.

The author contrasts ""transfer of information" (one-way from sender to received) to "communications" (which is a two-way conversation), and notes that a fair amount of communication is nonverbal (expression and gesture, with a note that text messages such as e-mail are often misinterpreted without them).

The author also contrasts adoption (repeating a practice) and adaption (modifying a practice to suit the circumstances), which differentiates between a company that merely mimics what its opponents do without understanding its value from those that understand the value, and see ways to improve upon it. Naturally, the latter is to be preferred.

The author mentions Heisenberg's Principle - that the act of observation changes that which is observed (it comes from particle physics, in which you cannot measure a particle's location without impeding its movement, or measure its movement without alerting its location) This is presented as a caution against micromanagement: when the management's need to inspect in great detail interferes with the ability of staff to accomplish its goals, it has become counterproductive.

The author asserts that time is "the assassin" of many leaders: people with great potential fail to prove themselves because they devote time to the minor tasks (phone calls, e-mail, routine tasks, etc.), largely because they fail to delegate to others to reclaim their time for more important uses.

In particular, leaders expend too much effort on decisions that should be delegated. Decisions should be pushed as far down the organizational hierarchy as possible, enabling those who are closest to the action to apply their experience, guided by the initiatives set at a higher level. Not only does this clear the leader's time to make more important, high-level decisions, but it also places authority to act at a lower level, enabling subordinate levels to act quickly, under their own authority.

The author considers Robert Baden-Powell, an intelligence officer in the British Army, and founder of the Scouting movement. The latter arose accidentally, as the training lectures he wrote for young recruits, intended to teach survival skills, initiative, and independent thinking to young army recruits became popular among civilian boys. Of chief importance was Powell's motto of "be prepared" - developing skills and gathering information to make quick decisions in the field, to work cooperatively with others, and to adapt to overcome adversity. These skills are important for leaders in general.

(EN: The above seems like a hodgepodge of random stuff, and so it is.)